


Languor

by MnemonicMadness



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Finch!whump, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, M/M, Near Drowning, Pining, Sort Of, Whump, accidental love confession, moderate violence but the drowning is more on the explicit side, so i tagged violence just in case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 20:07:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13061247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MnemonicMadness/pseuds/MnemonicMadness
Summary: He had stumbled and slipped, hitting the handrail with his bad leg and losing the rest of his balance, inertia tipping him over the rail. And he fell.John yelled for him.Two gunshots.Cold.





	Languor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [talkingtothesky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkingtothesky/gifts).



> I'm not too late yet, am I? Happy Birthday, Sky!!! I wish you the best and hope you've had a great day, and that you'll enjoy this!

John's panicked shout of his name, followed by the bangs of two gunshots, came thin and distorted through the wind rushing in Harold's ears as he fell, his own startled cry ripped from his lips. He had barely time to register the sudden agony in his injured leg or the instinctive panic that came with falling before icy cold wrapped around him and the taste of sludge and rot invaded his still opened mouth, choking him.

* * *

It had all happened rather quickly as these things were wont to do. The number had been a fairly simple one, at first appearance as close to an open and shut case as he and his partner ever got. A young, working-class mechanic financially supporting her ailing mother had fallen in with the Russian mob and been unable to keep up the payments of her debt.

They had settled the matter with some strategic blackmail, a message that John had delivered with what, judging by what Harold had observed over the surveillance feeds, might have been a little too much glee and a broken bone or two more than strictly necessary. Though having heard some of the threats uttered towards their number, Harold could hardly begrudge his friend his protective zeal.

Complications had arisen with the revelation that one of the low ranking members had an eye on their number in a... less professional capacity and wasn't prepared to let go of the matter quite as easily even after the Brigadier had adhered to their suggestion to declare their number off-limits. With John thus occupied making threats in a different part of town when they'd learned of the imminent danger, Harold had been left with no choice but to leave the safety of the library and brace the New York winter to pick up the number and take her to a safe house.

As he had already feared when he'd left, hindered by snowfall, the traffic was rather slow moving with several streets temporarily blocked by accidents. He had arrived at the number's flat with little time to spare, the tracking software on his phone indicating that the perpetrator would arrive within few minutes. So for the sake of buying time, he and the mechanic had taken the back door out, giving them a head start but also leaving them to flee on foot, unable to reach Harold's car.

They had only just made it to the rendezvous point, the bridge where John would meet them, when the perpetrator had caught up to them. He had stalled as much as possible so that by the time his partner finally arrived, tires squealing and gun drawn, their number was still unharmed, but recognising the Man in the Suit who had made life difficult for him and the organisation he worked for, the perpetrator had sought to flee. And so, the goon had created the first distraction he'd been able to think of, unfortunately for Harold.

It was almost more of an accident, really. An unfortunate interplay of the force he'd pushed Harold with, the ice covering parts of the walkway, the much too low handrail and the laws of physics, more than deliberate intent. It was effective nonetheless. He had stumbled and slipped, hitting the handrail with his bad leg and losing the rest of his balance, inertia tipping him over the rail.

And he fell.

John yelled for him.

Two gunshots.

Cold.

_Cold._

The cold was everywhere, pressing in from all sides, the Hudson River's putrid water flowing into his mouth, in his nose, burning in his eyes even after he'd shut them. And the _cold_. He'd felt a floe break when his back had hit the water, had felt a piece of it cut his forehead. It took a second until the cold, muddy water soaked through his coat and into his suit, feeling as though he was wrapped in a sludge of ice. His body seemed to convulse, as if his internal organs were shrinking towards his heart like it was an oven they could huddle around, every part of him twisting painfully.

His lungs were burning with the sudden lack of oxygen and obviously some part of his consciousness hadn't quite caught on to this sudden turn of events because he found himself instinctively trying to breathe in. More polluted water rushed into his mouth and throat and he coughed futilely. He needed air.

Harold's soaked clothes felt like weights dragging him under, keeping him immobile to the point that he couldn't even begin to try shrugging them off no matter how much he struggled. And yet, they seemed all too cooperative with the current that had taken ahold of him and was dragging him away. To the side or deeper under, he couldn't tell, it had robbed him of any sense of up and down along with the last of the body heat his clothing had conserved. His arms were weighed down the most and his injured leg was entirely useless, burning with agony and unmoveable, and he was helpless, hanging in the water as the river's plaything.

It dragged him to the sides and turned him over and before he realised it, he hit his head and suddenly there was _air_. Just for long enough to spit out some of the water and take a gasping breath, then the river dragged him back down, icy, brown waves uniting above his head.

The cold was beginning to affect him, seeping deep into his muscles and into his bones, replacing more and more of his strength with it. It was seeping into his mind too, slowing his thoughts as if they too were weighed down with wet fabric, freezing into an opaque wall of glass between him and the panic that hadn't left him since he fell. _Hypothermia_ , his rationality supplied unhelpfully.

Another current carried him upwards and left him gasping, and again he swallowed the sludge, some of it running down the inside of his windpipe. Someone shouted in the distance. Water in his ears muffled his hearing.

Up, down, forward, the current dragging him on.

Cold.

So cold it _hurt_ , until it started to stop hurting.

Then something different, tightly around his arms, defying the current and dragging him up, up, up and there was air but he couldn't _breathe_ . His eyes burnt and his vision was blurry, – _where did he put his glasses_ – black spots beginning to dance in it, or were those the snowflakes? They looked so dark against the grey winter sky...

The opaque wall of _cold_ was growing thicker and the spots larger – _not snowflakes_ – and somewhere beyond that was the splashing of water and then the crunch of wet gravel and if someone hadn't held him upright, he would have collapsed to the ground and never gotten up. He was almost surprised to find his legs automatically carrying some of his weight now that they had ground to stand on again, at least for a little while.

The spots danced, the world spun, nausea rushed through him and then he was throwing up icy sludge, his cold, sluggish body protesting with agony but finally, fresh oxygen rushed into his lungs. The darkness receded and someone was calling his name.

_John._

John, who was as soaked to the bone as Harold was and shivering almost as much. Who had unhesitatingly jumped into the Hudson River after him. A niggle of worry forced itself through the opaque glass to the front of Harold's consciousness, making him wish to ask after his dear friend, but he abruptly became aware of the chattering of his teeth in time with the violent shivers that raked his body and made speech impossible.

Not being able to feel his feet was a very peculiar sensation, he decided as he half-walked and was half-carried back towards the bridge. The river had dragged him quite a bit, or so he guessed by what he could identify without his glasses. Perhaps squinting his eyes would help. He didn't try, such a small motion seemed to take so much effort that even the thought exhausted him. Or perhaps he was just exhausted. The cold still made it difficult to think clearly and he was sure that under any other circumstance he would have found some irony in that. Wasn't cold ordinarily supposed to clear one's head?

John was talking to him. As much as he would have loved to listen, he couldn't seem to find the focus, so instead he contented himself with enjoying the familiar, comforting cadence of his voice, letting it wash over him like the river had and wash away the lingering panic in the back of his mind.

The truly regretful thing about his predicament, he found, was that it also left him unable to appreciate the way John's arm was wrapped tightly around him, instead of the usual, gentle, barely there touch of his hand at the small of Harold's back. Though he always did appreciate that as well.

They stepped back onto the bridge and Harold didn't see the perpetrator's foot and almost stumbled over it, held upright only by how tightly he was pressed against John's body. He stared.

The perpetrator was lying on his front, face hidden against the frozen concrete, two perfect holes in his olive green windbreaker, one centred on his spine, the other lower and more to the side, so the bullet must have torn through his heart, killing him instantly. The bullet holes looked oddly clean, only the faintest specks of red in the fabric around them, almost as if they were torn by accident and the man would get to his feet any moment now.

He didn't. Even without sufficiently accurate anatomical knowledge it would have been obvious by the unnatural stillness only a corpse had, by the lack of the chest heaving for breaths and the minute, unsurpassable twitches of muscle. The blood was running from underneath the body towards the foot of the bridge, pooling where it had begun to freeze at the edges, frost painting intricate patterns into the red, reaching further and further towards the corpse.

It should have bothered him, it occurred to Harold somewhere deep inside the icy fog clouding his awareness. It should have bothered him that the bullets had found the man's torso instead of his kneecaps. It should have bothered him to see the blood freezing against the pavement. It didn't. All he felt was the cold and the heaviness of his soaked and freezing clothes. The cold, and John's arm around him.

The dead man's hands had started to take on a white, almost bluish hue and Harold wondered if his own were just as pale, but they were too heavy to lift and check. The white of the snowflakes first contrasting with, then melting away into the red blood was oddly mesmerising.

John's voice slithered through the fog, calling his name again, and Harold lifted his head to look at him, even though the motion exhausted him and made his nervous system suddenly regain awareness of the fact that he possessed a fused neck that caused him chronic pain and did appreciate neither the exposure to this temperature, nor the fall that had preceded it. John's salt-and-pepper hair was plastered to his head with water. Ice crystals were caught in it. They didn't melt, it was too cold.

His teeth weren't the only ones chattering and if he focussed, he felt John's shivering despite it being less severe than his own. Some part of him approved of the latter observation, but was drowned out by the concern, and that was what made him move his feet again. One heavy, stumbling step on numb feet after the next, away from the body.

Towards the car. John's car. What had happened to his own?

They'd had a new number hadn't they? He should ask what had happened to her, but the thought seemed so distant, impossible to work up the energy for to ask...

Another shiver was strong enough to cause him to lose his footing on the icy ground. He was almost surprised to find that his arm could apparently still move, catching himself with his palm on the hood. The metal may have ordinarily been slightly warm to the touch, but under the present circumstances it seemed to sear his palm. He quickly pulled his hand away.

John was – _still? Again?_ – speaking, hoarse voice low and comforting, barely above a whisper and Harold decided that was enough, he didn't need to know what exactly his partner was saying. Surely, John would take care of him to the best of his abilities.

Gun-calloused, trembling hands were at his throat, unwrapping the dripping scarf so gently that his neck twinged no more than usual. Then they wandered to his throat, tugging at his tie, sliding down to his shoulders and brushing the heavy, woollen coat off them, the thick, usually so warming material sliding down his useless arms and taking his jacket with it. Back at his throat, John's hands hovered for a moment and a look of frustration crossed his partner's beautiful eyes – _had they always been this shade of stormy blue?_

The frustration turned apologetic and if Harold had the energy or the care left, he would have flinched in surprise at the sound of fabric ripping. Buttons sprung from his dress shirt, small and pearly white, shimmering with daylight as they spun in the air and hitting the ground with a noise akin to raindrops on porcelain. It struck him as too loud compared to the soft whistle of the wind.

Wind he should be able to feel against his now bare upper body, just like he ought to feel the glittering snowflakes melting against his torso. He felt cold. Only the same, even cold, like the frozen surface of a mountain lake.

And then the cold cracked with the warm, dry fabric that settled around his shoulders, expensive and soft yet overstimulating against his chilly skin. Still, he let himself sink into it to the best of his ability, letting the comforting scent envelop him. John's coat. How odd. Looking up, he found that John was indeed only wearing his suit.

He had the strange urge to scold him for exposing himself to the winter's cold like this, but something behind the opaqueness remarked that doing so would be absurd, considering the state they both were in.

John first reached around him and then _for_ him, pushing him gently into the softness of the passenger seat and crouching to the ground in front of him. Had he been able to lift his arms, he would have buried his hands in his partner's hair, now within perfect reach as his friend untied his shoes and pulled them off, still tempting even soaked with dirty water. He didn't and John carefully lifted his legs into the car. He still couldn't quite feel his feet.

The door was shut, the other one opened and shut again, John sliding into the driver's seat. The chattering of Harold's teeth was gratingly noisy in the enclosed space. He distracted himself by watching the other man shrug his own jacket off, throw it carelessly in the back seat and reach up to unbutton his shirt, the one that had been as white as the fresh snow outside but had now taken on an undeniably ochre hue. If he had been warmer and in the full possession of his wits he would have secretly enjoyed the sight of more and more skin slowly being revealed. As it was, he hoped the sight would remain in his memory, to be enjoyed and appreciated at a more opportune moment.

A moment later, the shirt joined the jacket in the general vicinity of the backseat and the motor purred to life, prompting Harold's memory to begin reciting the engine parts in alphabetical order, a soothing, mental white noise humming among the icy fog that still separated him from the world, from parts of himself.

The cold was eating into the last of his strength. He was so _tired_.

* * *

The next thing he became aware of was the blur of the outside world, nothing recognisable behind the veneer of acceleration and his near-sightedness. He still didn't know where his glasses were. _Still?_

His neck hurt when he tried to turn his head, a head that seemed to weigh much more than the density of organic tissue could account for. A blurry figure was reflected in the window, lean but broad-shouldered, driving the car. A familiar voice was emanating from the figure. It sounded comforting, but with undeniable worry resonating in it. From what he could tell – _why was it so hard to think_ – it wasn't addressing him, but someone by the name of Tillman via the hands-free set

Harold was shivering violently. His slacks were clinging wetly to his legs, heavy and saturated with water, heavily polluted judging by the smell. He felt cold, colder than he could ever remember being but he couldn't remember _why, where had the water come from_. It seemed important. _Was it?_

By the time the man next to him ended the call, the familiar cadence had almost lulled him back to sleep. It would have, had it not been for the strange worry that lived behind the cold in his mind, an instinct telling him to _stay awake_.

“Finch?” Now it was him being addressed, the voice sounded even more worried than before. “Harold, you with me?”

_Nathan?_

“Nathan?”

Hesitation. The sound of a throat being cleared. Why was it so cold?

“Yeah. Harold, I need you to stay awake. Can you do that for me?” The vaguely Nathan-shaped figure reflected in the window was gripping the steering wheel tighter. Something was... _off_. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, like a word caught on the tip of his tongue, something he had forgotten or a mistake he had made, something _important_.

“Harold?” Nathan's voice had gone from frantic to desperate, sounding unusually rough. Perhaps he had caught a cold? It wouldn't surprise him, with how cold he himself felt.

“Talk to me, Harold. Tell me... anything. As many digits of pi as you can think of. Or how to make eggs benedict, or your favourite poem, just... just talk to me. So I know that you're okay.”

The urge to reassure his friend finally gave him enough energy to reply, and there was something he had wished to discuss with Nathan, something he'd longed to talk about and hear his advice.

“There is something I've been meaning to hear your opinion about, Nathan. I'm honestly not sure why I haven't brought it up until now.” The words came out sounding strangely slurred, but Harold knew he wasn't drunk. Perhaps the cold...? There it was again, the intuition that this was important somehow. He pushed it aside. No use for details without context.

“You sure it's a good idea to tell me now?”

He frowned, wishing he could turn his head to look at Nathan. The sense of wrongness was still persisting. “Why wouldn't I?”

Again, Nathan hesitated in a way he had never done. “I know you're a very private person. Why don't you tell me all about that tomorrow, and stick to pi for now?”

“I doubt that would be all that entertaining, and seeing as you are the one driving, I'd rather you'd stay awake. Besides, out of the two of us I may be the more mathematically astute, but I will always need your advice when it comes to matters of a more personal nature.”

Nathan remained silent for a few minutes, or perhaps seconds. However long, it was long enough for the bone-deep cold to begin tugging at Harold's eyelids, weighing them down.

“Alright, what's bothering you? No promises that I'll be of any help though.” he finally said, voice still strangely low and hoarse.

Harold attempted a reassuring smile, hoping Nathan would see it in the reflection, but sighed soon after. “I'm afraid I may have done something rather stupid, Nathan.”

The man next to him made an encouraging noise.

He swallowed thickly, the thought of speaking out loud the secret he'd carried with him for months now, perhaps even longer, seemed suddenly more daunting than he'd expected. He really should have spoken to Nathan earlier – _there had been a reason he hadn't, he knew it, an important one, but..._ “I've fallen in love with someone.”

His friend cleared his throat and Harold wished he were able to see his facial expression. Alas, the reflection in the window was distorted and even if it hadn't been, all his near-sightedness in combination with that inexplicable exhaustion let him see were the colour of his skin and the way the lighting made his hair look unusually dark.

“Doesn't sound that stupid to me.” There was some emotion in his voice he couldn't identify for the life of him, something tight and almost pained yet understanding.

“No, I suppose not.” Unbidden, the image of John rose through the fog, smiling, flirting, teasing, and for the first time in... how long, he wasn't sure, he felt a spark of warmth in his chest. “It's not like I could help it, really, with someone that kind and warm-hearted and caring and capable and terrifyingly selfless and just so genuinely _good_. Smart too, and much more cultured than appearances may suggest. And as if that weren't enough, truly exceptionally good looking as well.”

Nathan huffed a laugh, sounding unusually gruff and strained. Fake. This time, he couldn't shake the sense that something was simply _off_ , but there seemed to be little he could do about it, not until he could get warm, could _think_ again.

“She sounds pretty amazing, Harold, so what's the problem? If she's even half as smart as you give her credit for, I'm sure she feels the same way. You're pretty amazing too.”

“He.” he corrected, before letting out a laugh of his own, possibly sounding even more bitter than his best friend's had. The thought of John somehow, miraculously falling for an old, socially inhibited cripple like him was absurd, no matter how much the former soldier genuinely cared for him, the caring irrevocably anchored in his very nature. “And I highly doubt it, he has much better taste than that. But regardless of that, even if by some miracle he might come to feel the same way about me, it would be wholly inappropriate for me to pursue him. Not only is he my employee and therefore financially dependent on me, but I'm also fairly certain that he is under the impression that he owes me a debt. Or at the very least, he may very well go along with any miserable attempt of courtship I might make out of gratitude.” He huffed, unable to keep a pained smile off his face. “As I said, John is rather frightfully selfless.”

Even with shivers still raking through his undercooled body, the opaque cold still clouding his mind and the subject at hand distracting him, there was no missing the sharp gasp from next to him.

“ _John?_ ” Nathan's voice shook with audible disbelief and desperate hope. _It didn't make sense. He was missing something, something crucial._

“Yes. John Reese.” there was no keeping the dreamy quality out of his tone, but the expected teasing about it never came.

“Harold... Harold, I...” His friend's cold-hoarse voice broke and Harold desperately wished he were able to turn around. But the cold had frozen his damaged body even more stiff than usual, so he was left helpless in his concern, the movement from his shivers already enough to jar him to the point that hot stabs of pain raced through him from his permanent injuries.

Nathan cleared his throat harshly before speaking again, strangely deep voice still trembling. “Harold, please trust me, he loves you too.”

He couldn't help the disbelieving scoff, even if it sounded rather pathetic through his chattering teeth. “And what would make you so certain about that?”

“I'm... I know him, Harold. I know him and I _know_ he loves you more than anything. I... He told me himself.”

And oh god, but Nathan sounded so certain, the conviction behind his words cutting through the fog with startling clarity and without thinking, he whipped his head around to stare at him. Tried to, at least. Cold always exacerbated the pain in his neck, and he was barely aware of the cry he let out.

A hand, only minimally warmer than his own, grabbed his arm, grounding him as he breathed through the pain, almost grateful when the distracting cold settled over his consciousness again.

“Dammit, Harold, I'm so sorry. Don't... just don't move. We'll be at the library in a few minutes and we'll get you warmed up and then... Tomorrow. Once you're clear-headed again, if you want, you can talk to John about this, okay?”

He managed the smallest of nods with a grateful smile and relaxed into the seat as much as he could. He noticed that he could finally feel his feet again and even though he was still shivering, there was a warmth spreading through his chest now. Perhaps not a physical one, but he'd prefer the warmth of hope any day.

“Thank you, Nathan. What would I do without you.”

The only answer was the hand still on his arm giving a soft squeeze, and Harold wondered why that hand had gun callouses.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!!! I hope you liked it? If you want my eternal love and gratitude, leave a comment :)


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